We just got back from seeing Race to Nowhere. Wow, what a powerful film. I recommend it to everyone reading this blog. Unlike almost everything else that you hear in the discussion about education, it asks the important questions, like "what are we doing to our kids?"
I had a thrill of recognition when the film-maker described talking to school administrators about her depressed daughter, only for them to say, "She's fine! She's doing really well!" Been there, done that.
There's a very sad discussion of a girl who committed suicide at 13, and it brings up a point I've wanted to discuss. Some kids commit suicide because of bullying by other kids, and this is a very serious problem that must be addressed. But there are also kids who commit suicide because of the pressure exerted by school, and this must be addressed too.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
e-mail to a math teacher
Mr. Q -- DD mostly enjoys your class; she says it's the best math class she's had. The homework so far has been reasonable, so on the whole we feel that the class is going well.
However, I was not pleased when DD came home recently and told me she had a "strike" against her because she had forgotten to ask me to sign her quiz, for two reasons:
1.) When you use baseball metaphors in class, you send a subconscious message that math is for boys. DD's a girl; she doesn't have any experience of baseball. In fact, I asked her about it today, and she wasn't sure what a "strike" in baseball even means.
Suppose I was teaching a math class, and you were my student, and I was constantly using metaphors related to knitting. ("Hey! You dropped a stitch!") You'd feel that the class wasn't really meant for you, right?
2.) More importantly, I don't like to see DD scolded for completely trivial errors. I want school to be a positive experience for her. All she did was forget to ask me to sign her quiz. How does that warrant anything more than a simple reminder? The "strike" system is negative, punitive, and unnecessary. Why do it at all?
Thank you for your consideration. -- FedUpMom.
However, I was not pleased when DD came home recently and told me she had a "strike" against her because she had forgotten to ask me to sign her quiz, for two reasons:
1.) When you use baseball metaphors in class, you send a subconscious message that math is for boys. DD's a girl; she doesn't have any experience of baseball. In fact, I asked her about it today, and she wasn't sure what a "strike" in baseball even means.
Suppose I was teaching a math class, and you were my student, and I was constantly using metaphors related to knitting. ("Hey! You dropped a stitch!") You'd feel that the class wasn't really meant for you, right?
2.) More importantly, I don't like to see DD scolded for completely trivial errors. I want school to be a positive experience for her. All she did was forget to ask me to sign her quiz. How does that warrant anything more than a simple reminder? The "strike" system is negative, punitive, and unnecessary. Why do it at all?
Thank you for your consideration. -- FedUpMom.
The Never-Ending Homework Battle
This morning, I sent the following e-mail to my older daughter("OD")'s teachers at the mucho expensive private school:
To OD's teachers:
Last night, OD got home from her soccer game (away) at close to 7:00. She was exhausted from a full day of school followed by sports. At this point she had already put in over a 10-hour day.
She had dinner and relaxed a bit with her sister, and got started on homework at about 8:00. She had homework in 4 subjects: Math, Spanish, Science, and Social Studies. I would estimate the time needed for each of these assignments as follows: Math, 1/2 to 1 hour; Spanish, 1/2 to 1 hour; Science, well over an hour; and Social Studies, 1/2 to 1 hour. If she worked without a break, with maximal focus and efficiency (not likely because of her exhausted condition), she might have been able to finish it all in about 3 hours. As it was, she got through everything except the Science by about 11:00, at which point I sent her to the shower and started winding her down to bed. She didn't get to sleep until well after midnight.
There are two issues with homework; quality and quantity.
First, let's discuss quantity. Even if the quality of the homework was excellent, there was simply too much. OD is a 13-year-old child. I don't want school taking up every moment of her day, and wrecking her sleep at night. She needs time to call her own. She needs to have dinner with her family, hang out with her sister, and just plain relax in the evening. It's not reasonable to pile hours of work on top of a 10-hour day of school activities.
Second, let's discuss quality. The quality of much of her homework is not high. Often, it seems like paperwork rather than actual learning. One of her assignments, writing an outline of a paper that she already read and highlighted, seemed especially ill-conceived, tedious, and burdensome. The physical act of writing the outline would take OD at least an hour.
In conclusion, I would like all of you to look closely at the homework you assign. Is it reasonable? Is it useful? Is it necessary? Then, you need to communicate with each other and make allowances for sports teams so that you don't pile hours of work on a child who has only a few waking hours left in the day.
We took OD out of the public schools in the first place because she was profoundly depressed on account of stress and overwork. I don't want her to go from the frying pan to the fire.
There is a film showing tonight at the [local theater] at 7:00, called "The Race to Nowhere". If you have a chance, I hope you will see this movie. It's about the pressure that our kids face in school.
Thank you for your consideration. -- FedUpMom.
We're going to see "The Race to Nowhere" tonight. I'll keep you posted --
To OD's teachers:
Last night, OD got home from her soccer game (away) at close to 7:00. She was exhausted from a full day of school followed by sports. At this point she had already put in over a 10-hour day.
She had dinner and relaxed a bit with her sister, and got started on homework at about 8:00. She had homework in 4 subjects: Math, Spanish, Science, and Social Studies. I would estimate the time needed for each of these assignments as follows: Math, 1/2 to 1 hour; Spanish, 1/2 to 1 hour; Science, well over an hour; and Social Studies, 1/2 to 1 hour. If she worked without a break, with maximal focus and efficiency (not likely because of her exhausted condition), she might have been able to finish it all in about 3 hours. As it was, she got through everything except the Science by about 11:00, at which point I sent her to the shower and started winding her down to bed. She didn't get to sleep until well after midnight.
There are two issues with homework; quality and quantity.
First, let's discuss quantity. Even if the quality of the homework was excellent, there was simply too much. OD is a 13-year-old child. I don't want school taking up every moment of her day, and wrecking her sleep at night. She needs time to call her own. She needs to have dinner with her family, hang out with her sister, and just plain relax in the evening. It's not reasonable to pile hours of work on top of a 10-hour day of school activities.
Second, let's discuss quality. The quality of much of her homework is not high. Often, it seems like paperwork rather than actual learning. One of her assignments, writing an outline of a paper that she already read and highlighted, seemed especially ill-conceived, tedious, and burdensome. The physical act of writing the outline would take OD at least an hour.
In conclusion, I would like all of you to look closely at the homework you assign. Is it reasonable? Is it useful? Is it necessary? Then, you need to communicate with each other and make allowances for sports teams so that you don't pile hours of work on a child who has only a few waking hours left in the day.
We took OD out of the public schools in the first place because she was profoundly depressed on account of stress and overwork. I don't want her to go from the frying pan to the fire.
There is a film showing tonight at the [local theater] at 7:00, called "The Race to Nowhere". If you have a chance, I hope you will see this movie. It's about the pressure that our kids face in school.
Thank you for your consideration. -- FedUpMom.
We're going to see "The Race to Nowhere" tonight. I'll keep you posted --
Friday, October 22, 2010
KIPP SLANT
[Continuing the discussion of KIPP which I started in a previous post.]
KIPP schools use the acronym SLANT for required classroom behavior:
Sit up straight
Listen
Ask questions
Nod
Track the speaker with your eyes
From a typically fawning NY Times article:
[Dave Levin is one of the founders of KIPP.] Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly ... Middle-class Americans know intuitively that “good behavior” is mostly a game with established rules ...
And why is behavior so important?
Angela Duckworth published ... a research paper that demonstrated a guiding principle of these charter schools: in many situations, attitude is just as important as ability. Duckworth studied 164 eighth-grade students in Philadelphia, tracking each child’s I.Q. as well as his or her score on a test that measured self-discipline and then correlating those two numbers with the student’s G.P.A. Surprisingly, she found that the self-discipline scores were a more accurate predictor of G.P.A. than the I.Q. scores by a factor of two.
Oh yeah? I'm not surprised a bit. Grades are all about compliance. The compliant, conventional, average kid will outperform the unconventional genius every time.
For a little balance, here's a rare critical article about KIPP, from the LA times: Long days, strict rules mark schools.
KIPP schools use the acronym SLANT for required classroom behavior:
Sit up straight
Listen
Ask questions
Nod
Track the speaker with your eyes
From a typically fawning NY Times article:
[Dave Levin is one of the founders of KIPP.] Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly ... Middle-class Americans know intuitively that “good behavior” is mostly a game with established rules ...
And why is behavior so important?
Angela Duckworth published ... a research paper that demonstrated a guiding principle of these charter schools: in many situations, attitude is just as important as ability. Duckworth studied 164 eighth-grade students in Philadelphia, tracking each child’s I.Q. as well as his or her score on a test that measured self-discipline and then correlating those two numbers with the student’s G.P.A. Surprisingly, she found that the self-discipline scores were a more accurate predictor of G.P.A. than the I.Q. scores by a factor of two.
Oh yeah? I'm not surprised a bit. Grades are all about compliance. The compliant, conventional, average kid will outperform the unconventional genius every time.
For a little balance, here's a rare critical article about KIPP, from the LA times: Long days, strict rules mark schools.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
A Visit to A KIPP School
I have long been suspicious of KIPP, or the "Knowledge is Power Program", a charter school company which is a darling of the mainstream media. KIPP mostly teaches low-income, minority kids.
KIPP's motto is "Work Hard, Be Nice", and they ain't kiddin' about "Work Hard". KIPP schools have long hours (7:30 -- 5:00), and their students spend about 67% more time in class than most public school students. They are also given upwards of 2 hours of homework per night, and homework over "vacation". Famously, KIPP students are taught middle-class habits like sitting up straight and tracking the teacher with their eyes.
As for "Be Nice", as a woman, I've had people telling me that all my life, and it's never done a bit of good.
Not content with taking over the kids' lives, KIPP also overworks its teachers. From the KIPP website:
KIPP teachers are expected to help all students succeed, and they typically work a nine-hour work day during the week, half days on selected Saturdays, and three weeks in the summer. They also are available via cell phone for homework help in the evening.
No one should expect teachers to martyr themselves for the good of their students. Teaching, like all jobs, should allow a reasonable balance between work and personal life.
I was interested to read the following comment posted by "chemtchr" at Bridging Differences:
Actually, I accepted Kipp's invitation today, to come and look at a charter middle school. Four academic classes had a smartboard with a worksheet up on it. The board was smart, the content was dumb, the teachers were exhausted from leading the stereotyped clapping and response activities that accompanied the filling of the worksheet.
"What is classification? How does classification help us?" There was nothing to classify, no student interaction, and the teacher was unable to get any kid to respond with the desired answer, so she couldn't fill in the dumb answers so the class could copy them. The kids, instead, made comments about whether a person in a coma or an unborn baby was alive. The teacher could only respond by critiquing their adherence to the behavior rituals. Apparently the lesson was "How do we classify is a living thing?", and this was a science class.
Only one worksheet was not agressively dumb, because there were actually a couple of styrofaom cups set up in the front of the room, with thermemeters in them. Students didn't move, or handle the cups, but that teacher alone was able to address the content of what children said in response to the worksheet questions.
The other smart-board teachers were lost in the continuous struggle to maintain conformance with the bizarre clapping and posture rituals. This required continuous peppering of all discourse with monitoring, admonishments, threats to take away games, and little reward claps and games. The funniest reward games were Simon Says, and shooting a little Nerf gun at a target.
The kids (all very cute ones) were okay with it, and seemed neither beaten down nor particularly educated. I can see how you'd be able to take some great still pictures. The teachers were a visible wreck, but then their principal had just strolled in with a guest at the end of a very long day of this.
The kids were fresh as daisies, I have to say. They are indeed the lucky ones, and over half will win scholarships to the Catholic high schools, so they won't have to deal with MCAS. The unselected half will go to the public district, which is increasingly under the control of KIPP and other turnaround partners.
Hmm ... reliance on clapping and posture rituals ... does this remind you of anything?
KIPP's motto is "Work Hard, Be Nice", and they ain't kiddin' about "Work Hard". KIPP schools have long hours (7:30 -- 5:00), and their students spend about 67% more time in class than most public school students. They are also given upwards of 2 hours of homework per night, and homework over "vacation". Famously, KIPP students are taught middle-class habits like sitting up straight and tracking the teacher with their eyes.
As for "Be Nice", as a woman, I've had people telling me that all my life, and it's never done a bit of good.
Not content with taking over the kids' lives, KIPP also overworks its teachers. From the KIPP website:
KIPP teachers are expected to help all students succeed, and they typically work a nine-hour work day during the week, half days on selected Saturdays, and three weeks in the summer. They also are available via cell phone for homework help in the evening.
No one should expect teachers to martyr themselves for the good of their students. Teaching, like all jobs, should allow a reasonable balance between work and personal life.
I was interested to read the following comment posted by "chemtchr" at Bridging Differences:
Actually, I accepted Kipp's invitation today, to come and look at a charter middle school. Four academic classes had a smartboard with a worksheet up on it. The board was smart, the content was dumb, the teachers were exhausted from leading the stereotyped clapping and response activities that accompanied the filling of the worksheet.
"What is classification? How does classification help us?" There was nothing to classify, no student interaction, and the teacher was unable to get any kid to respond with the desired answer, so she couldn't fill in the dumb answers so the class could copy them. The kids, instead, made comments about whether a person in a coma or an unborn baby was alive. The teacher could only respond by critiquing their adherence to the behavior rituals. Apparently the lesson was "How do we classify is a living thing?", and this was a science class.
Only one worksheet was not agressively dumb, because there were actually a couple of styrofaom cups set up in the front of the room, with thermemeters in them. Students didn't move, or handle the cups, but that teacher alone was able to address the content of what children said in response to the worksheet questions.
The other smart-board teachers were lost in the continuous struggle to maintain conformance with the bizarre clapping and posture rituals. This required continuous peppering of all discourse with monitoring, admonishments, threats to take away games, and little reward claps and games. The funniest reward games were Simon Says, and shooting a little Nerf gun at a target.
The kids (all very cute ones) were okay with it, and seemed neither beaten down nor particularly educated. I can see how you'd be able to take some great still pictures. The teachers were a visible wreck, but then their principal had just strolled in with a guest at the end of a very long day of this.
The kids were fresh as daisies, I have to say. They are indeed the lucky ones, and over half will win scholarships to the Catholic high schools, so they won't have to deal with MCAS. The unselected half will go to the public district, which is increasingly under the control of KIPP and other turnaround partners.
Hmm ... reliance on clapping and posture rituals ... does this remind you of anything?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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